The Fibreoptic Industry Association

A Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered Office: The Manor House, BUNTINGFORD, Herts SG9 9AB, UK Registered No. 2713611

Secretary: Jane Morrison

The Manor House

BUNTINGFORD Hertfordshire SG9 9AB

United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0) 1763 273039 Fax: +44 (0) 1763 273255

e-mail: jane@fiasec.demon.co.uk

ASSESSMENT OF DATA CENTRE DESIGN AVAILABILITY USING EUROPEAN STANDARDS

Mike Gilmore, Director, STANDARDS@fia

for Netcomms Europe (February 2014) Many regional standards have been published in the last ten years which address design of data centre infrastructures. For example, ANSI/TIA-942-A focuses on the telecommunication infrastructure while BICSI 002 considers itself a standard covering the full range of infrastructures but is, in reality, a comprehensive set of design and implementation best practices. However, neither of these documents can be considered to define requirements that can be wholly employed (or conformed to) because of their inherent linkages to other US standards which are incompatible with European or wider international practices. Within Europe, CENELEC is producing a set of standards that define minimum requirements for the critical infrastructures of data centres ranging from one or more cabinets in an existing building to dedicated stand alone structures comprising multiple buildings. These standards also recognize the diverse nature of data centre business models and the complexities of configuration and ownership of the information technology and network telecommunications equipment that may be accommodated. For this reason, the standards only address the availability of the data centre infrastructures rather than that of the services it provides. The EN 50600 series classifies the design of power distribution, environmental control and telecommunications cabling infrastructures in terms of Availability Class. A number of these standards have now been approved and it is appropriate to begin their introduction to the UK market. BS EN 50600-1:2013 defines the concepts of the complete series, linking the design requirements for an infrastructure and the security of its pathways and spaces to the availability objective for the total set of infrastructures. For those with experience of other availability assessment schemes, the EN 50600 series operates on a

fundamentally different basis. This is represented by the fact that acute risks to data centre availability focus on technical failures of power supply and either technical or administrative failures of the or the data connections provided by the telecommunications infrastructure. These are treated as acute because even the shortest interruption can cause chaos for the data processing within, and data supply from, the data centre - independent of its size or purpose. By comparison, failures of

the environmental control system are considered to be chronic - i.e. short term interruptions to cooling do not cause an acute failure of data centre availability.

The Fibreoptic Industry Association

A Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered Office: The Manor House, BUNTINGFORD, Herts SG9 9AB, UK Registered No. 2713611

The Figure shows this by introducing the risk and cost elements alongside the more recognised N and N+1 design concepts. There are four Availability Classes and the assessment of a data centre availability of a given Class requires all three of the infrastructures to be of that Class (there is an optional Enhanced Class 4 solution but this is not a conformance requirement of the standards). The Figure shows that Class 4 availability assessment in accordance with EN 50600 does not require the environmental control system to be as fault tolerant as the power supply and telecommunications cabling infrastructure. This avoids the need to introduce the Tier 3.5 concept or similar interim classifications of convenience which are applied by certain design and accreditation organisations. In addition to the published BS EN 50600-1:2013, the remainder of the standards in the series comprise six separate standards in a series EN 50600-2-x. EN 50600-2-1 covers construction and specifies building construction, independent of the size and function of the data centre. It addresses both site selection for new data centres and assessment of existing buildings and structures. It defines constructional requirements and is directly linked to EN 50600-2-5 in relation to physical security aspects. EN 50600-2-2 specifies the design of power supply and distribution systems and the quality of the supply provided for a given Availability Class. Both EN 50600-2-1 and EN 50600-2-2 have been approved and await publication as British Standards in Q1, 2014. EN 50600-2-3 defines the environmental requirements for the various data centre spaces and specifies the design of environmental control systems for a given Availability Class. EN 50600-2-4 specifies the telecommunications cabling infrastructure for a given Availability Class by reference to the existing generic cabling design standards EN 50173-2, EN 50173-5 and EN 50173-6 and the installation standards of the EN 50174 series. The standard also addresses the installation of cabling in order to maximise the efficiency of environmental control systems - which affects the energy management of the data centre overall. Both EN 50600-2-3 and EN 50600-2-4 are expected to be approved in Q4, 2014. Requirements for measures to assure physical security of data centre spaces including access controls, fire detection and suppression are addressed in EN 50600-2-5 - due to be approved early in 2015. To complete the series, EN 50600-2-6 addresses the management of this operational information which may be used to assess the performance of the data centre using applicable Key Performance indicators and is also due to be approved early in 2015.